Culture & Entertainment

3 things I learned from Peter Mansbridge

Culture & Entertainment

3 things I learned from Peter Mansbridge

If you’ve read the September issue of
Canadian Living, you might have seen our
interview with Peter Mansbridge. I was thrilled to speak to the iconic Canadian news correspondent who regularly teaches our nation about some of the most pressing and complex issues we are facing today. We have come to trust that familiar voice of his to break down the news for us, and I knew I could
learn a lot from him. I also knew he had an unexpected past: After leaving both school and the army sooner than expected, he sort of stumbled into a job at the CBC. I asked him about his past and about how his views on
education have changed over the years. He opened up about childhood transgressions and was even more down-to-earth and easy-going than I expected. Unfortunately we didn’t have room to fit everything into the article, so I’ve included some of my other favourite moments with Peter Mansbridge here. These are three things I learned in my conversation with Peter Mansbridge.
1. He loves seeing others finish their educations. As chancellor for Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Mansbridge gets to take part in graduation ceremonies each year. “I cherish the 10 or 15 seconds that I will spend with each student on the stage as they get their degrees, because it is the full range of emotions that you see before you,” he says. “These are young men and women who have spent the last four years of their lives to achieve this moment, and some of them are overly excited and happy. Others are incredibly emotional, surrounded by friends and family. I never experienced that. I never had that personally, but I get to share in it with them. And it’s an incredible opportunity.”
2. Even he doesn’t quite know what the future of news media holds. It was a slightly disappointing, though very real, realization for me to learn that even the Canadian king of news honestly doesn’t know what’s going to happen to news in Canada in the next few years. His candid response included an admission that, to his own surprise, he doesn’t even read a print newspaper anymore. “I can’t remember how long ago it was when I last physically picked up a newspaper,” says Mansbridge. “And I wouldn’t have predicted that five years ago. I was hearing that [was going to happen], but I wouldn’t have been one of the ones predicting it. I thought there would always be a newspaper at my front door, but I stopped that a long time ago now.”
3. Before he retires, he hopes to educate Canada about climate change. Mansbridge knows he doesn’t have much time left, but he’s not wasting any days waiting for retirement. “I try to get to the Arctic once a year and to find different ways of telling stories about a quite incredible part of our country that’s going through rapid change as a result of
climate change,” says Mansbridge. “My hope is that I can do a better job in the time that I have remaining in this position in telling that story—which I think is one of the most overwhelming stories of our time—that we still haven’t found a way of properly telling.”
(Photography: John Hryniuk)